Birutė Kapustinskaitė. STAND-UP FOR MEANING AND MEANINGLESSNESS, dir. Eglė ŠVEDKAUSKAITĖ

On September 29, the performance STAND-UP FOR MEANING AND MEANINGLESSNESS will be subtitled in English. Subtitles are best viewed from rows 7-10.

◊ 2024 Golden Stage Cross. Best Actress – Vitalija Mockevičiūtė ◊ 2024 Golden Stage Cross. Best Playwriting – Birutė Kapustinskaitė

Director — Eglė ŠVEDKAUSKAITĖ

Set Designer — Ona JUCIŪTĖ

Costume Designer — Dovilė GUDAČIAUSKAITĖ

Composer — Ernestas KAUŠYLAS

Lighting Designer — Monika ŠERSTABOJEVAITĖ

Assistant Director — Kotryna SIAURUSAITYTĖ

Producer — Rugilė PUKŠTYTĖ

CAST

Mother — Vitalija MOCKEVIČIŪTĖ

Son — Karolis KASPERAVIČIUS

"When they invited me to create this act, I said, okay, I'll create it, but you know, it's going to be dark. They say, that's very good, people like darkness. I say, really? They say, yeah. I say, well, let's go."

For the first time on the theater stage, stand-up comedy – a genre that, through laughter, cleanses not only the storyteller but also the listener. Making another person laugh is a truly difficult task. And an even harder task, which concerns the theater using humor as a form of communication, is to touch upon painful themes of grief, loss, and suicide that are close to us all. To stir something unexpected in a person, to help them laugh at themselves, to look at painful experiences from the side so that they can come to terms with them.

Collaborating for the first time, playwright Birutė Kapustinskaitė and director Eglė Švedkauskaitė invite the audience to travel together into new theatrical forms and explore loss in a family through a single stand-up comedy act.

The play's characters: Mother – a famous TV host, and Son – a successful stand-up performer – neither is at a loss for words, yet when faced with the loss of the Father, communicating with each other becomes difficult. This is a story about letting go of anger, shame, and guilt, and searching for how to open up to vulnerability and to each other.

"Stand-up for Meaning and Meaninglessness" is a comedic play about the main characters' attempt to communicate after the loss of their father. Black humor, self-irony, and narrative humor (stand-up) are combined here with drama, weaving together a story about loss, about the mother and son's relationship with society's attitude toward grief, and the resulting need to adapt," says playwright Birutė Kapustinskaitė.

"I believe that theater, as a public communication tool with a wide audience, must speak not only about heroic death and sacrifice but also about elementary, non-mystified mental health; it must follow what is happening in society here and now, and must foster empathy for people facing depression and other mental illnesses. This performance is a way to talk about hope and the desire to live, even when it seems you don't know how to do it," says director Eglė Švedkauskaitė.